Borges, Jorge Luis | Jose Eduardo Gonzalez (essay date 1994)
Jose Eduardo Gonzalez (essay date 1994)
SOURCE: “Borges ‘The Draped Mirrors,’” in The Explicator, Vol. 52, No. 3, Spring, 1994, pp. 175–76.
[In the following note on “The Draped Mirrors,” Gonzalez describes how Borges uses the concept of narcissism.]
Critics have associated Borges's use of mirrors in his short stories with ideas of representation and repetition.1 Although the problematic relationship between mimesis and literature is a central element of Borges's aesthetics, the symbol of the mirror can also be given a different interpretation, one that is too often ignored: In some borgesian texts, mirrors can also be said to symbolize narcissism. In “The Draped Mirrors,”2 for example, Borges uses the Narcissus myth as a subtext for his story. But Borges does not merely rewrite the Greek story using contemporary characters, he also distorts the original story and transforms it into an entirely...
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